Democrats should be the modern version of "Clean for Gene"
Clean-for-Gene, I will inform younger readers, is the phrase meaning that young volunteers cut their hair before traveling to New Hampshire to help Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign, where he contested incumbent president Lyndon Johnson. The haircut was a recognition that long haired hippy-student style grooming turned off adult voters. If young people wanted to be effective we had to make sure our personal style didn't estrange people we were trying to motivate.
People cared enough to cut their hair. We wanted to persuade, not estrange.
 |
| Food therapy is better than being counter productive |
Tina Fey just got some criticism. On Saturday Night Live she said that when viewers witnessed outrageous things like white frat boys in polo shirts shouting about taking their country back, that instead of shrieking at them the person should eat cake, the tried and true therapy of calorie loaded food.
She went on to say, "I really want to encourage all good, sane Americans to treat these rallies this weekend like the opening of a thoughtful movies with two female leads: Don't show up. Let these morons scream into the empty air."
It is also great political messaging advice. A great many Democrats want to do something, something to resist Trump's agenda, something to make the statement that they find Trump vulgar and dangerous, something to make a show of force against racism.
Most of what they want to do will backfire.
The least effective thing a Democrat can do is show up at a rally of neo-Nazis, prepared to counter-protest and shout them down. The optics are terrible. The second worst thing a Democrat can do is march in some rally and disrupt traffic while doing so. People don't want to be inconvenienced on behalf of someone else's politics. The third worst thing a Democrat can do is show up at some public meeting and think that being unruly and disruptive (as contrasted with angry but polite) because the big message that is projected is that the protesters are disruptive, not that they are correct.
Violence and disorder are good for Trump. Trump got elected in part by offering people safety from the fear over crime by immigrants and terror by Muslims. He was the law and order candidate.
Trump, Fox News, and a great many Americans of both parties look at a shouting or shoving confrontation during an event organized by white supremacists, and they consider both sides to be essentially equal in fault. It does not work for Democrats to say that "they started it!", with they meaning neo-Nazis. On TV everyone looks the same. Everyone was itching for a fight.
Donald Trump called it that way--violence on all sides. Donald Trump knows how to de-legitimize. He ascribed a motive to the counter protesters. It wasn't justice. It wasn't that they were the good-guy anti-Nazis. Donald Trump characterized counter protesters as "anti-police agitators."
Who would believe that characterization? Lots of people, especially if they see on TV police interacting with protesters.
Trump, Fox News, and a great many Americans of both parties look at a shouting or shoving confrontation during an event organized by white supremacists, and they consider both sides to be essentially equal in fault. It does not work for Democrats to say that "they started it!", with they meaning neo-Nazis. On TV everyone looks the same. Everyone was itching for a fight.
 |
| This is how Trump describes counter protesters. |
Donald Trump called it that way--violence on all sides. Donald Trump knows how to de-legitimize. He ascribed a motive to the counter protesters. It wasn't justice. It wasn't that they were the good-guy anti-Nazis. Donald Trump characterized counter protesters as "anti-police agitators."
Who would believe that characterization? Lots of people, especially if they see on TV police interacting with protesters.
 |
| This is how the conservative media covers counter protests. |
Democrats need to understand that the political theater of resistance to Trump is counter-productive when resistance creates civil disruption. Trump wants Democrats to rise to the bait. If there is disorder in the streets then Trump gets legitimacy when he takes strong executive action. It validates the image he sold the public: the strong leader who will keep us safe.
How to be "Clean for Gene"--i.e. smart--as a modern-day manner of resisting Trump?
Be politically active with phone calls, petitions, involvement in public events, and most important, avoid falling into the trap of making persuadable voters think you are actually more dangerous than Trump. Don't dispirit political allies by demanding all-or-nothing agreement with candidates. Most important, actually vote, Democrats lose elections because politically active ones do not vote as a matter of principle, staying home or going third party, while politically inactive Democrats don't don't bother voting. Democrats are not defeated by Republicans. They are defeated by bad turnout.
Tina Fey's advice is sound Deal with outrage by eating sooting cake. Then don't show up at their events. It makes them look pathetic, a strong message to send.
1 comment:
"People don't want to be inconvenienced on behalf of someone else's politics."
While I generally agree with the advice I immediately think of a distinction. Tina Fey is talking to people who feel guilty about their insulation from much of the suffering of the poor, disadvantaged and discriminated. Their outrage is mostly intellectual and the result of things they have seen in the media. The overt white supremacists expose the covert racism that still pervades our society particularly in the cities. Those who have been lifelong activists must be smiling to themselves as they watch the streets fill with folks who are "shocked there is gambling".
Then there are those who are rising up after generations of suffering and hopelessness. Obama failed them, not by his own fault, and now they are risking arrest or worse as they try to make themselves heard. They are desperate and desperate people can be noisy. They are the canaries in our civic coal mine.
Our town hall with the smug and self-satisfied Walden was noisy, and afterwards I saw several letters to the editor from people wagging their fingers at those who were, in their opinion, "rude and disrespectful", adding the ultimate conservative insult: "childish". Perhaps so, as those of us who are speaking out aren't sure how to calibrate our message to a deaf politician. I have debated with otherwise Progressive leaning friends about those who are demonstrating by blocking traffic, something I see as totally understandable, though regrettable. We are past the point of polite dissent.
I would suggest that when Democrats lean moderate it gives regressives more room to denigrate Progressivism. I think most Progressives understand and accept that progress is slow, and for the most part are restlessly content as long as the direction is towards greater economic and social justice. Now there is fear that progress is being undone, and while it's happening those in power are attempting to intimidate those who are concerned into silence.
Post a Comment